


Just Another Day during the Apocalypse

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salt and burn their bones, pizza and booze after. Part of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/350105">Red Shoes</a> verse. (for those who ask, but wasn't Dean cis in "Red Shoes," I will reply, I am fucking up my own canon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Day during the Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> For Lena and Rory

Castiel leans in close to the mirror, draws the liner thick under xer eyes. They have the illusion of appearing larger, as if they are wide and open, as if they are all-seeing.

Xe wonders if that’s blasphemy, then shrugs. Xe no longer cares as xe peels off the plastic of an unopened tube of red lipstick, pops off the plastic cap. Drags red across xer lips. Blots with a square of toilet paper, licks a tiny smear from xer teeth.

Castiel tilts xer head in the mirror, then turns to xer collection of makeup bought from cheap corner market stores until xe finds a box of blue eye shadow. Xe starts with a lighter sky shade, passing over the lid and up to xer eyebrow. Outlines the hollow and dip of xer closed eyes with a darker shade of forget-me-nots, blue as their petaled faces turned upwards to the kiss of the sun. Adds the dark horizon of midnight and dawn with a single, deft stroke.

Then Castiel remembers what Jo taught xem that night of whiskey shots. Xe lightly blurs the makeup with the pad of xer thumb, then traces xer eyebrows, tinting them blue.

Castiel’s eyes are so blue, bluer than blue water and blue sky and blue days.

Xe leans in close to the mirror, presses xer lips to the surface for someone to find later.

Father had always said that his work was perfect, but Castiel was pleased, a hard knot of satisfaction and triumph and good old fashioned fuck you, that his work could be improved.

Perfection, like xer eyes, is an illusion, and the corner of Castiel’s mouth lifts in the mirror. 

“Hurry up,” Dean shouts, and so xer turns from the mirror, tightens the knot of Jimmy’s blue tie a little, and shuts the bathroom door.

Dean’s slid close to the edge of the bed, leaning over his knees and lacing up his black shoes. His binder hitches up, wrinkling like his skin wrinkles over his muscles and his bones. He stands up, stretches, shoulders popping in their joints.

“You’re not even ready yourself,” xe says.

“Don’t frown at me like that.” And Dean jerks his face up, chin high, neck a tower of David and strength, the cords of his muscle strung tight. Nods at Castiel before pushing himself up off the bed, smoothing his palms down his torso. His hands reach for Castiel’s tie, pushes the knot up a little higher. “There we go.” Pats xer jacket, the side with the pocket housing the fake FBI badge. “We are two awesome FBI agents on a mission of justice.” Dean pulls on a dress shirt, then they’re out the door and sliding into the Impala. Dean turns up his tunes, sings along a half-note off key, but Castiel doesn’t mind.

Xe rolls down the window, sticks out xer arm. The wind brushes against Castiel’s skin, drying it out, pushing its way under the cuffs, tickling the tender underside of xer wrist.

Dean slides a glance over at Castiel, eyebrows going up with the beat, nodding his head in self-satisfaction. “We’ll meet up with Sam at the library. She’s still just cross referencing info, trying to find out the precise location of the grave so that we can salt and burn and get on home to pizza and booze.” Dean nudges Castiel in the ribs, and xe can feel his warmth through the trench coat and the cheap collared shirt and cheaper cotton undershirt. 

They interrogate the necessary people, and they tell what they know. Castiel notices that Dean looms in close to them, too close to be comfortable, not close enough for people to complain about Dean’s dismissal of social niceties—just enough to make them shiver and ripple under their skin, look over their shoulders for refuge but there are only walls behind them and Dean before them.

They tell Dean what they know, so they go to the library where Sam hunches in her seat, muscles too tight, boxed in by a tower of books and public records and blueprints. She helps them drag up chairs, shows them the information, a wide smile on her face. “Nothing but a straight up haunting. Spring break from the apocalypse.”

 “For now,” Dean mutters, shooting a glare at Castiel, even though Castiel sees Sam deflate, her eyes fixed on her hands, the way they twitch against the paper.

Castiel narrows xer eyes at Dean, gets up and paces as Sam orders everything in a neat pile for the librarians and Dean edges closer to the exit. “Come on, come on. There’s a bed with magic fingers waiting for me.” 

“Gross,” Sam says.

With Sam folded up in her customary spot in the front seat, knees to chest, her broad shoulders too square to barely fit, Castiel sits in the back, watching the road ribbon out beneath their wheels.

Castiel could have been there by now. With a snap of xer fingers, usher the ghost into oblivion. Castiel shifts and flexes underneath xer clothes, underneath borrowed flesh, rented muscle. The skeleton is a cage of bone and marrow, so Castiel turns xer attention to the vocals of Styx, and how Dean swats Sam’s hand away when she tries to turn it down.

They finish the job, go on home to the motel. Sam sits down on the bed, toes off her  mud-crusted boots and her heavy duty cotton socks to fend off blisters. Her nylons run up her calves, the seam not quite as straight as it was this morning, the tiniest hint of a tear in the stockings. She plucks at it softly with her thumbs, shaking her head until her hair fall in a soft sweep across her forehead.

Dean’s on the phone, ordering pizza, voice loud and brazen asking for all the meats and okay maybe a quarter of one with vegetables for Sam gosh, and Castiel draws closer until xe’s shadow falls over her, until xe steps into the v of Sam’s legs. Castiel reaches out—noticing that the clear lacquer on xer fingernails is chipping, possibly from shoveling grave dirt—but then focuses on the way Sam’s jaw fits in the palm of xer hand, the feather pressure of suggestion needed for Sam to lift her head, and stare up at Castiel. “Your eyes are so blue today,” she says, and Castiel nods before bending over Sam, blowing her hair out of her face, and pressing a kiss to her forehead, her nose, her lips.

Sam freezes beneath xem, hands hovering over xer shoulders. Castiel steps away, waits a few moments before holding out xer hand.

Sam’s lips part, her breath harsh over them as she looks away, buttoning them up again, before her stare flickers back to Castiel’s palm, then xer face, before finally clasping xer hand, and rising to crush her mouth with Castiel’s.

 Dean clears his throat, tosses his phone on the counter until it skitters into the wall. “So is this an exclusive party or what,” Dean says, lips curled a little too high in a smirk. 

Sam and Castiel exchange a glance, then Castiel strides towards Dean, pushes him against the wall, slides xer knee between Dean’s legs, and kisses his mouth until xer lipstick is a red smear across xer lips.


End file.
